Copyright Information & Guidelines

The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.

There are four common ways that works arrive in the public domain:

• the copyright has expired
• the copyright owner failed to follow copyright renewal rules
• the copyright owner deliberately places it in the public domain, known as “dedication,” or
• copyright law does not protect this type of work

Content in public domains vary from country to country. What may be freely available in one part of the world, may not be in other parts. Copyright laws in general differ depending upon where the work was originally published, and where rightsholders still retain control over their work.

Source: Stanford University Libraries

In terms of copyright protection, works in the public domain in the U.S. generally include the following:

• U.S. Federal legislative enactments and other official documents
• Titles of books or movies, short phrases and slogans, lettering or coloring
• News, history, facts or ideas (note that a description of an idea in text or images, for example, may be protected by copyright)
• Plots, characters and themes from works of fiction
• Procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries or devices

Note that the above list of works may be protected by other areas of intellectual property such as patents or trademark protection.

Government Sources

Books/Texts